


The Place Where Love Resides

by Awahili



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix It, Post 08x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 06:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18733213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awahili/pseuds/Awahili
Summary: As long as he lived he would never forgive himself for putting that look on her face, for watching how she crumbled beneath his callousness.I had to, he reasoned with himself for the hundredth time.If I didn’t, she would have followed me.Jaime's thoughts on his first night away. Post Ep for 08x04.





	The Place Where Love Resides

He couldn’t cry. Not that he didn’t want to, it was just too damn cold. The few tears he’d already shed had frozen to his face, pinpricks of pain on his cheeks that reminded him of his own monstrousness. He spurred his horse on, away from Winterfell. _Away from her_. As long as he lived he would never forgive himself for putting that look on her face, for watching how she crumbled beneath his callousness.

 _I had to_ , he reasoned with himself for the hundredth time. _If I didn’t, she would have followed me._

He couldn’t be the one to lead her into death. He held no illusions about what awaited him in King’s Landing. If the Mountain didn’t kill him, Cersei might, and if neither of them managed it there was still the Dragon Queen to contend with. She might not take too kindly to Jaime’s sudden appearance and mistake it for betrayal. Jaime flinched at the memory of dragon fire, of the heat rolling off the corpses and -- further back -- his own men. Just the idea of Brienne falling to any of them was enough to harden his resolve.

_She deserves better._

Better than him, better than anyone in the whole gods-forsaken world. She was the Warrior made flesh, and holding her had been like caressing divinity. He tried not to think about their shared nights, those glorious evenings that he would keep and cherish until his last day, but it was in vain. His fingers tightened on the reins, remembering the way her muscles jumped and corded beneath his touch. The memory of her kiss, fierce and passionate just like everything she did, warmed him to his toes. It would be his last kiss, and he resolved to be thinking about it in the moment of his death.

He rode through the dawn and most of the next day before he looked for a place to camp. He recognized the landscape from his recent trip north and knew that another hour of riding would bring him to Cerwyn Castle, abandoned now until the northmen returned from the war. The gate was open and Jaime rode through to the stables. Unwilling to leave his horse unattended, he bedded down against the back wall away from the harsh winds that had sprung up with the setting sun. He’d sleep for a few hours, he told himself, then he’d get back on the road.

He’d no sooner shut his eyes when his horse nickered in alarm. Footsteps approached and Jaime eased himself as quietly as he could onto his feet. Drawing Widow’s Wail was difficult to do silently, but he managed it just as the intruder rounded the corner.

“Pod?”

Podrick Payne looked equal parts relieved and worried. “He’s here, Ser!”

Jaime closed his eyes and lowered his sword. There could only be one person he was speaking to, and it was the one person he didn’t think he could face right now. He opened his eyes and she stepped into view just as Podrick slipped away, mumbling something about taking care of the horses and a hot meal. She stood there in the archway of the stables, bedecked in gleaming blue armor with Oathkeeper on her hip. Brienne looked every bit the knight she was, the knight he had once longed to be before the gods had given him a crueler fate.

“Stupid woman,” he hissed. “Go back to Winterfell.” Fear sharpened his words, made him strike out with the intention to wound her, to drive her away. He remembered the way she’d reacted to him last night, the way his record of wrongdoings had landed on her like physical blows before he’d delivered the final killing stroke. He had been thankful for the cover of darkness then. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to face her in the daylight, when he could so clearly see the pain in her eyes. Pain he had put there.

But there was no despair in her steely blue gaze, no trace of the pleading woman who had begged him to stay. ( _Stay with me_ , she’d said. Gods, how he wished he could.) Instead he met the fierce stare of Ser Brienne the Knight as she raised her chin and squared her broad shoulders.

“I will not.”

Something like desperation leaped into his throat and painted his words as he strode forward angrily. “There’s nothing for you in King’s Landing except death.”

“There’s you.”

 _Nononono._

“I’m going to Cersei.” It was a cruel hit, if not entirely truthful. He was going to see the end of her madness, one way or another. 

Brienne didn’t flinch. “If that were true, then you would not have come to my bed.”

He laughed, trying to add an edge of callousness to it, but not quite making it. _Just go_. “What makes you so sure, my lady? Perhaps I just needed a good fuck after the fight.”

He had intended for his words to sting, to put distance between them. Fourteen hundred miles, to be precise: the distance between Winterfell and King’s Landing. He waited for her to react, for the walls that he’d seen fall these past few days to be slammed into place once more. He waited for her anger, for contempt and disgust to once again grace her features when she looked upon him.

But all he saw was love. It was foreign and familiar at the same time, a precious light that Jaime feared he had snuffed forever. But he should have known better. She was stronger than that, stronger than _him_. She cradled his face in her palms again, and -- _oh_ \-- he had forgotten how warm her hands were. 

“Because I know you, Jaime,” she answered earnestly, and he tried not to think about the last time she’d spoken his name without his honorific. _Her long fingers carded through his hair, damp from sweat, and cradled his head against her bosom. It was a breathy sigh, two syllables on the wind that had ripped through him and made him shiver against her sweat slick skin_. “Because these last weeks have been the best of my life. Because I could feel in every touch how much you care, as I know you could feel it in mine.”

He could only nod minutely, unable to deny her words no matter the cost. 

“And I meant what I said before,” she continued. “You _are_ a good man.” She repeated it again, her fingers tightening ever so slightly as though she could physically press the words into his mind until he believed them.

Oh, how he wanted to believe them.

He met her stare defiantly, as though he still held the upper hand. ( _And when had he really ever had it?_ ) He tried to remember if he’d ever won an argument with her, but nothing came to mind. Defeated, he raised his two hands -- one flesh and one gold -- to rest against hers. His eyes slipped closed as tears froze on his cheeks. He felt her thumbs move over them, wiping them from his chilled skin, her touch a benediction as he bowed his head.

She shifted closer, her hands sliding around to rest on his head and shoulders as he sheltered in her neck. He breathed his apologies into her skin, sealing them there with a brush of his lips. She accepted them wordlessly, accepted _him_ , and he felt the weight of that trust so heavy that he sank to his knees. She went with him, kneeling in the snow, clinging to him as he sobbed harshly into the crook of her neck.

“I don’t know what awaits me in King’s Landing,” he admitted quietly.

She pushed him back to look in his eyes. “Whatever awaits you awaits me as well. We’ve been through too much for me to abandon you now.” And if he had any doubts in his mind before, they were washed away by the ardent look in her eyes. She loved him. It should have thrilled him, should have made him rejoice, but all he could see in his mind were those eyes staring lifeless from the cold stone floor of the Red Keep throne room.

“Cersei will kill you,” he rocked back to his feet and stood. “You understand that? She might let me live for a little while, but she will have the Mountain kill you immediately. Probably in front of me, just to make a point.” 

“She doesn’t scare me, and neither does the Mountain,” she said, rising to her feet as well.

Jaime shook his head. “You haven’t seen what he’s become, what Qyburn has made him. He isn’t human. I’m not sure he’s even really alive.”

Her left hand dropped to the pommel of Oathkeeper and his eyes followed. She stroked the lion’s head with clever fingers and he fought back a sudden rush of lust. “I’ve killed not quite dead things before,” she quipped. “I’ll not leave you to face your sister alone.”

“What about Lady Sansa?” he asked.

Brienne’s lips quirked ever so slightly in muted pride. “There are no more threats in the North. Besides, her sister can keep her safe.” That was true enough. Arya Stark had become something primal, something dangerous, and Jaime wasn’t entirely sure she was still completely Arya Stark anymore. She had saved them all, saved the entire realm, and still she remained as stoic and calm as water on a windless day.

“Cersei’s with child,” he blurted out, trying to find anything that might keep Brienne away from the poisonous capital. “My child.” He wasn’t entirely sure if it was true, or if the babe was even his, but it needed to be said.

“We weren’t careful,” Brienne answered evenly. “I may be, as well.”

And wasn’t _that_ an image he didn’t need in his head? His resolve to return her to Winterfell only deepened, but he was out of reasons to sway her. Instead, he sighed heavily, his breath fogging white in the space between them.

“There isn’t anything I can say to change your mind, is there?”

“There is one thing,” she offered. “Come back with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then neither can I.”

Their eyes met, and as the world fell away for a few precious moments Jaime tried to recall if he’d done anything in his life that had earned him this kind of loyalty, this kind of love. He didn’t think so. 

“Sers?”

They broke their stare as Podrick called from across the small courtyard. He stood in the doorway to Cerwyn Castle, and beyond him Jaime could see an orange flicker bouncing off the stone that meant he’d started a fire. The thought of a hot meal was a welcome one and Jaime felt rather than heard his stomach rumble. Brienne turned back to him, her brow raised in question. 

He answered, not with words, but with action. Her fingers clutched his as he slid his left hand into her right, a promise and an apology in one. Raising it to his lips, he let them linger on her knuckles for longer than propriety allowed. His eyes never left hers as he turned her hand over and laid another kiss into her palm before flattening it against his chest as though she could feel his heartbeat through the mail. _It’s yours_ , his eyes told her. _It’s always been yours_.

“Come on,” she urged him gently, and moved her hand from his chest to his wrist, tugging him away from the frozen ground of the stables and into the warmth of the keep.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe they did my boy like that. I firmly believe he said those things to keep her from following, to keep her safe. I fully expect to see Brienne and Pod with him next episode. After all of the glorious J/B goodness we've gotten for the last 3 episodes (not to mention 5 seasons), I can't believe that is where they choose to end it. There is more to come for our duo. Until then, I'm sure we'll be filling up these pages with words of comfort.


End file.
